We all know we need to TEST our landing pages, ad copy, well, essentially everything that people will ever see about us on the internet. What converts best? That is the ultimate question.
Many of us are overwhelmed by testing though. Split testing your ads is the best way to get moving and Derek Salyers posted a great article last week that should be a good start for many of you.
Click here to read Five Things to Test When Split Testing Ads
| Ann Smarty with Search Engine Journal wrote a good FAQ post this week about Google XML Sitemaps.I often get asked the million dollar question: Will Google Sitemaps help or hurt my site? |
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Well, the short answer in my opinion is help…or at least NOT hurt it. It will not make you #1 on Google for your primary keyword overnight. But it will help index some of those lower tier pages, which are often the pages with the best content after all, right?
Ann answers many more questions in her post, so give it a read here. And have a GREAT weekend!
| Matt McGee with the Small Business SEM blog provides some great tips (once again great for newbies and a good review for you SEO gurus out there) on how to do the basics of SEO in one hour. |
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In his post entitled “How to SEO your site in less than 60 minutes” you will find some obvious basics and not-so-obvious quick tips on SEO.
Most of the checks are very quick, but NOT doing them can cost you a lifetime of being relegated to the 8th page on Google.
Make sure to check out the comments as well.
Are your titles too keywordilicious?
That is one of the questions asked by Jennifer Slegg, an SEM consultant in this post
Her post is a very interesting look at the rules and, as she calls them “thou shalt nots” of Search Engine Optimization.
There is not much I can say that she does not cover so go check it out
| In the battle for literary supremacy on the web, it appears that numbers beat letters in a 7 round TKO.
According to a new article by Jakob Nielsen: It’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data. Traditional literary rules say that you should spell out (Four vs. 4) whole numbers from one to ninety-nine. |
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OK, I admit, this post is the first time since high school that I spelled out a number…they are NUMBERS after all, but I cannot argue with the experts.
Jakob is the expert on online writing though so I take his advice.
His full article is full of awesome information and background on the research (a bunch of fancy eye-tracking stuff), so check it out…Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers
Earlier this month, SEOMOZ released version 2 of Search Engine Ranking Factors.
37 leaders in the world of SEO, such as Danny Sullivan, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Aaron Wall, gave their opinions and insight on the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization.
The full article and results can be found here
Top Positive Factors included:
Keyword Use in the Title Tag, Global Link Popularity of the Site, and Anchor Text of the Inbound Links .
Top Negative Factors were:
An Inaccessible Server, Similar/Duplicate Content, and Low Quality External Links
Each factor is given a ranking by each of the panelists and ranked accordingly.
This article is a MUST READ!
Holly Buchanan writes a GREAT article about how to give your site “voice.” We all know that copywriting and appearance play an important part in the message you convey to your visitors. The wrong copy and look can send the wrong message and send your visitors fleeing!
The Browser Screen Resolution Checker is a pretty sweet tool to check your site in different screen resolutions. Back in my webmaster days, I always had to mess with the screen resolution to check this and it was a royal pain!
This tool is very easy to use and you can quickly check your site in all the different resolutions.
Check it out here
The Dimano Marketing Blog had a recent post entitled 11 Quick and Dirty Ways to Increase Conversions
Some of these tips are not relevant to our insurance affiliates, so I have highlighted the relevant ones below.
To read the full post click here
| Remove clutter Cluttered web pages are one of the most common mistakes on the Web. For some reason people like to jam all their information on one page. Clean things up by removing distracting, useless images, charts, or text. Provide users with information as they request it. You don’t need to put it all in front of their face at one time. The path you want the user to take should be clear from the homepage. When you stack up text and images, it dilutes the goal message, and can confuse users. Less is more! |
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Remove ads
If you’re trying to get people to buy a product or a service and you’re running Adsense or another ad system on your site you may be making a big mistake. These ads provide exit points for your traffic (and potential customers). Keep your customers focused on the task at hand. If they leave the site through an ad, “Great you made $.25,” but just don’t assume that person will hit the back button or ever return to your site. You may have just lost yourself a sale.
Not to mention, ads look extremely unprofessional on e-commerce sites. They are fine for blogs with no other means of monetization, but if you’re selling something do yourself a favor and leave the ads off.
Stronger calls to action
Evaluate your calls to action on a site-wide level. I just bet you find some great content or images that really pop, but lack a call to action. You may have come up with some outstanding copy about how special your service is and then left the reader hanging by not telling them to take the next step. You’re wasting your efforts if you aren’t telling your customers what they should be doing. I’m a fan of putting the word “now” on many calls to action because it implies a sense of urgency: “Order your money saving guide now!” This is just one example. There are many ways to form excellent calls to action. Find one that works well for you and stick with it.
Add reliability Indicators.
This another small step that can gain a customers trust. Consider adding brand-recognized logos “above the fold” on your site, such as the Better Business Bureau, and HackerSafe. Of course you have to actually join respective company’s services, don’t just put the logo up.
Security concerns such as using SSL to encrypt data are huge for web shoppers. Calm their fears by adding a security logo (maybe “Secured by Verisign”?), and a security policy to your policies page.
Also see my article on
The 4 Most Common Missing Pieces on Affiliate Sites
Test. Measure. Rinse. Repeat.
Okay, so this one isn’t quite “quick and dirty.” But trial and error is one of the foundations of usability testing. Try out different elements, such as different headings, one at a time. Then measure the effect through an analytics program. You should test one variable at a time so you know what change caused which effect. If you have some kind of multivariate testing program that can tell you what the effect of each change was, then by all means use it - its much faster that way. Keep whittling away at different page elements (”add to cart” buttons, headlines, page copy, image placement, etc.) until you are satisfied with the results.
An effective way to split-test is to point the same pay-per-click ad at 2 different pages, one with with your changed page and one with the current page to see if your changes were effective.
By Matt McWilliams, Affiliate Manager, HometownQuotes Insurance
There approximately 4 gazillion (unofficially) web sites in the world. Every teenager, mother, businessman, well pretty much everyone has a web site.
But you are different. You are monetizing your site, not trying to find a soulmate or post pictures of your latest fishing expedition. Your site should be clean, professional, and instill confidence in the buyer.
In finance and insurance, more than anything, you must gain the customer’s trust and confidence in your service. Unlike retail, flashy sites with bright colors and animation don’t work. Most of my suggestions below will apply mostly to the finance and insurance sectors, but lessons can be learned by all affiliates.
I have found that most affiliates (at least in the finance and insurance vertical) tend to leave the following four necessities off of their sites. Is your web site missing any of these important components?
Apparently ViewSourceWith has been around for a while but I did not know about it…
I am not much of a programmer or designer, but our tech guys and designers love this tool.
Essentiall it allows you to choose the editor that is used when you “View Source” on a Firefox page. You can also use several editors (such as Dreamweaver, HomeSite, or Frontpage) and toggle easily between them.
Stumbled upon this site on a forum but forget where…
I played around with it for almost an hour before I finally backed away from the computer.
A: Admittedly this would seem easy…just search on Google for “stock photos”
This will give you about 5,000,000 (or so) results.
So we compiled a list of our favorites and recommendations from top affiliates
Big Stock Photo
http://www.bigstockphoto.com
ClipArt.com
http://www.clipart.com/
Flaming Text
http://www.flamingtext.com
Istock Photo
http://istockphoto.com/
Photos.com
http://www.photos.com/
SXC
http://www.sxc.hu
Feel free to add YOUR favorite to the comments!
For a while now, I have been an active participant on the affiliate forum ABestWeb.
I strongly suggest signing up and becoming an active member in general but wanted to point out the Site review and Banner Review section especially.
It can be found here -
http://forum.abestweb.com/forumdisplay.php?f=146
So if you need some feedback, feel free to contact us here but also post it on there as well for some great feedback.
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